A. Use the OR Click Here for the Template Tutorial.
B. Course Information: Make sure your course number, course title, credits, class times (days, times, room numbers) are accurate. If your course is cross-listed, include both course numbers.
C. Instructor Information: Here you include not only your name, but also all contact information in case your students need to find you or call you or email you. Some instructors put a short bio here that informs the student of the instructor’s background, such as credentials or experience, to teach the course. If you check email on a daily basis, include this fact so that students are aware you will read their messages. If you don’t do email, tell them this and encourage students to leave voice mail messages on your office extension or other telephone number.
D. Office hours are important because this is when students know you will be in your office to meet with them.
E. Required Textbooks and Materials: Students need to know what they must either buy or borrow to be successful in the course. If something is recommended but not required, let the students know this too in case their finances are tight. Some instructors place a copy of course materials on reserve in the library to assist students who cannot afford to purchase them. You should also list sources where course materials can be purchased or loaned, including prices being quoted on textbook web sites and amazon.com. If you are teaching a lab course or other course that requires specific safety equipment like goggles or gloves, indicate whether these will be provided by the college or must be purchased.
F. Course Description: Make sure your course description, is worded exactly the same as the current Academic Catalog. Your course represents academic credit that is recorded on the student transcript in perpetuity; your course syllabus attests to the extent your course carries out the intent of the course information contained in the Academic Catalog. If your course is not listed in the Academic Catalog, you need to talk to the Academic Dean about how to proceed.
G. Prerequisites: Prerequisites represent the background students must have to be successful in the course. Not all courses have prerequisites. If your experience has shown that students have not done well when they have signed up for your course without the prerequisites completed, you should include a statement to this effect. Some students overestimate their abilities to overcome a lack of preparation, and so you may need to remind them of the need to have completed the prerequisite that will help them succeed.
H. Course Learning Objectives: You need to set out your objectives for student learning here. Make sure you state them in terms of what students need to show, do, perform, and not what you intend to teach. If you frame your course objectives in terms of what you intend to teach, you also need to say how you are going to know whether or not students have learned what you have intended to teach. Exposure to a topic, having student become familiar with a topic, having students gain an appreciation for a topic does not address student learning. Instead you need to restate your objectives in terms of what students need to do to demonstrate they have learned. Use active words such as explain, demonstrate, recite, perform, conduct, analyze, evaluate… See the Assessment Web Site for more help on course learning objectives, especially Bloom’s Taxonomy. This section will be critically important for the Assessment Program at LCOOCC. As you list your Course Learning Objectives, make sure you indicate what objectives are General Education Objectives and make your life easier by stating them in the same words as the General Education Objectives. If your Course Learning Objectives are also Program Outcomes, then make sure you say that. If a course is required in a program, there is usually at least one reason for it, and you can communicate the rationale(s) as Program Outcomes.
I. Academic Policies (not in the template at this point, but under Course Requirements in the template): The rationale for including Academic Policies together and adjacent to the Grading Policy is not only because the two are related, but also having these towards the top of your syllabus provides more emphasis. If you have an attendance policy, state it here. If you have a policy about Midterm or Final Exams, state it here. If you have consequences for missing class, state them here. If you have a procedure to contact you in case of missing class, make sure it is clear and understood by the students. If missed class assignments cannot be made up, state it here. Students need to understand what will happen if they miss class and their options to try and keep up with the rest of the class. Include your policy on Incomplete grades such as is included in the template under Course Requirements. Another important academic policy to be sure to include is one on Plagiarism. Many faculty members will hand out a separate sheet on Plagiarism that may be an institutional policy, departmental policy, or faculty policy. A policy may already appear in the Academic Catalog or Student Handbook. A good policy statement defines what is considered plagiarism (don’t assume that students know this, especially if they have gotten away with it previously) and the consequences of plagiarizing.
J. Grading Policy: This is sometimes set aside from other academic policies. Students need to know how their grade will be determined and what grading scale you will be using. A good grading system will allow students to track their own performance as the semester evolves. A grading policy should emphasize the weight of major exams, such as the final exam, in terms of the overall course grading system. Using multiple measures of student performance allows all students an opportunity to show different modes of learning and knowing in the meeting of your course objectives. If you don’t give “A” grades at midterm (and there is research evidence saying that an “A” grade at midterm may backfire on the student because of over-confidence or a heavy-loaded final exam or final written paper assignment that is not taken seriously), say so.
K. Computer Use: The template has text regarding use of computers on campus. You might also want to emphasize that students are responsible for keeping backups of their work so that you don’t get the 21st Century version of “the dog ate my homework.”
L. Critical Assignments (not in the template): If you have a major library or research paper required, you need to begin the process of describing the assignment, timelines and deadlines, and if possible, grading criteria. If you are still working on the criteria and the rubrics, indicate that there will be a separate handout on this assignment.
M. Recommendation for Withdrawal from the Course: This is in the template but you might want to include this in the Academic Policy section above. It is in the students’ best interests to formally withdraw if they are unable to continue attending. It helps them expedite the process if they are aware of the procedure to withdraw. Be cautious about assuring them of the absence of future jeopardy. While future financial aid at LCOOCC may not be jeopardized, this may not be the case in the future should the student enroll at another college or university. There is a limit to the total semesters under some financial aid programs, and the financial aid policy legislated by Congress may change.
N.
Course Requirements: This is in the template. Although Critical
Assignments (not in the template) is suggested above, the rationale for having
that section adjacent to the Grading Policy is to emphasize the importance of
the most important work your student will do. Absence policy is also included
above in the Academic Policy section.
O. Tentative Topic Timeline and Assignments Timeline: Because courses almost never run according to your predetermined schedule, it is a usual custom to call the timeline “tentative.” When you list your timelines, you can do it by class days or weeks. There is more than one format possible for this section:
O You can list topics and reading assignments in the same timeline set up as a table in Word or separate spreadsheet in Excel. Using this concise format ties reading assignments to specific topics to be covered in class. This will help students organize and prepare for class discussion. You then can use the timeline in a concise way as a calendar to flag due dates for student performance assignments (papers due), exams, quizzes, and other waypoints. Then provide another outline of student performance assignments that are tied to assessment of your course objectives.
O You can provide a day-by-day or week-by-week written outline that includes a more verbose description of the topic, the reading assignment, the specific objectives or outcomes for that day or week, and the student performance assignment (paper, quiz, exam, oral presentation) that will be used to assess the meeting of that objective.
O You can do a variation of the first format by including homework assignments tied to the topic and reading assignment. This is helpful with such courses that require daily homework assignments, such as problems or short essays.
If you list reading assignments by date, don’t just list dates and reading assignments (such as textbook chapter or page numbers) without topics. You should have a concise topic for each reading assignment or chapter at the very least so that if your syllabus is reviewed in the future for your course content (such as to decide whether or not the course will transfer to another college), the receiving institution knows what was taught and how much time was planned for each topic. Remember that our mandated assessment program has course embedded learning objectives. One of the features of having a separate Assignment Timeline is that you can link specific assignments to assessment of course objectives, general education objectives, or program outcomes. The next section describes in more detail one way of looking at the nitty-gritty of lesson or unit objectives that may be utilized to build your course-embedded assessment from the bottom up. This is an option some may find helpful to organize a tentative schedule and to prioritize material to be covered in the course.
P. Lesson/Unit Objectives (not in the template): This section is sometimes incorporated into a timeline. Or it can be a separate section in the syllabus and keyed to specific chapters of the textbook. These objectives are very narrow and specific to the lesson or unit being learned and provide the student with your expectation of what they need to be able to do at the end of the lesson. It could be as simple as converting from Fahrenheit to Celsius temperature, describe the characteristics of the plants studied that day, list the factors leading to the outbreak of a specific war, etc. Many of these objectives are content-based, as opposed to the more global course objectives, general education objectives, or program outcomes. Many textbooks set aside a sidebar at the beginning of a chapter with learning objectives for that unit. Use these to prioritize what you believe are the most important things a student should learn once done with that chapter or unit.
Q. End of Syllabus Pep Talk: Sometimes it is useful to end a syllabus with a reason why this course will make them better students, better citizens, or better prepared to enter their employment upon graduation. When students see the context of a course in the entire curriculum, they can approach the learning expectations with more understanding of the importance of taking this course and how their lives will be transformed because of it. Well, don’t make promises here, but instead you may want to restate the course objectives at the beginning of the syllabus in terms of real life goals.
R. Receipt of Syllabus Form: Many faculty members have devised a means of documenting that the student had actually received a copy of the Syllabus. Some have gone as far as to require a signature with a date on a form that is kept by the faculty member in case the student disputes a grade on the basis of “not knowing what is in the syllabus” or “I didn’t get a syllabus.” Such disputes may include issues such as the attendance policy, assignment deadlines, or grading policy (homework, quizzes, attendance, participation). If the student has received a syllabus, they are responsible for knowing and understanding its contents. If a student loses the syllabus, they should be able to obtain another one from you.
S. Making your life easier: Keep all syllabi on both your hard drive and on a floppy disk. Many portions of your syllabi may be consistent from one course to another, such as Instructor, Academic Policies, Grading Policies, the tentative timeline calendar for the semester, etc. Instead of retyping the entire syllabus from course to course, set up your own style of template that can be edited. The next time you teach the same course, update your syllabus, taking out the things that did not work, improving on what did, revising the tentative timeline calendar, and honing the learning objectives to reflect student learning and not teaching goals.
T. Make sure you give or send a copy of your course Syllabi to the Academic Dean’s Office. (This is a condition of your contract).